The large increase in amount of data generated by digital systems has created a new set of challenges for data storage environments. Traditional storage area network (SAN) and/or network-attached storage (NAS) architectures have not been designed to support data storage or protection at large multi-petabyte capacity levels. Object storage technology can be utilized to meet these requirements. With object storage technology, organizations can not only keep up with rising capacity levels, but can also store these new capacity levels at a manageable cost point.
Typically, a scale-out, cluster-based, shared-nothing object storage that employs a microservices architecture pattern, for example, an Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS™) can be utilized as a storage environment for a new generation of workloads. ECS™ is a cloud-based object storage appliance, wherein the storage control software and the physical magnetic disk media are combined as an integrated system with no access to the storage media other than through the ECS™. ECS™ is an append-only virtual storage platform that protects content from being erased or overwritten for a specified retention period. ECS™ does not employ traditional data protection schemes like mirroring or parity protection. Instead, ECS™ utilizes erasure coding for data protection, wherein a data chunk is broken into fragments, expanded, and encoded with redundant data pieces and then stored across a set of different locations or storage media.
The above-described background relating to storage systems is merely intended to provide a contextual overview of some current issues, and is not intended to be exhaustive. Other contextual information may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.